How I Came to Spend 3 Hours in the Psych Ward

Sometimes being a good homeschooler means knowing when to look for outside help. There are times when we have to admit, "I can't do this on my own." Looking for, and finding, the right help can be tricky though.

Years ago when Rob and I set out to find help for our son Sparky we began by reading everything we could on Asperger's syndrome. The library was a great resource. I was really surprised by the number of books available on the subject. Gosh, I even found a couple of books on homeschooling on the autism spectrum!

Shortly after that I attended a 2-day seminar on Asperger's that was a huge help. It gave me the practical information I needed to help my son learn social skills and to help me deal with meltdowns.

Fast forward a few years and I find myself looking for help again. Sparky is getting older (10 1/2) and the Asperger issues seem to be getting more intense in some areas. Specifically, meltdowns and dealing with anger. So, today Rob and I spent more than 3 hours, along with Sparky, at the psyciatric clinic at U of M where they have an Asperger/autism clinic.

The clinic gave us a ton of information and options. Rob and I will be taking the route of attending sessions ourselves, sans Sparky, to learn how to deal with his emotional needs. They'll be teaching us how to teach our son. I prefer this approach over the approach of the therapist working directly with him. I'm with Sparky every day, the therapist would only see him once every week or two.

I know from the comments and my emails that this is a topic of interest to a good number of you. So, I'll post on Asperger's as I attend these sessions beginning next week.

In the meantime, please offer up prayers for Sparky and other Asperger kids. Prayers for their parents and health providers would also be great. Thanks!

St. Jude Rocks!

St. Jude has answered our prayers once again. You may recall the desperate prayer to him on closing day, well he came through again. In a big way. At least I think so.

First a little back story. As you already know, Teen Son is planning on attending Franciscan University Steubenville in August and you may also recall that he is my severely dyslexic child. Through proper instruction (Orton Gillingham) he learned to read and through our special read aloud time together he learned to love reading. However, it takes him longer than most to accomplish the task. (It also helps if he listens to a BOT as he reads.)

So, when he took his ACT he was unable to finish the test. Even so, he still had a pretty good score, landing him an academic scholarship. But FUS is very expensive and we've been struggling to find more financial aid. We were told that in order to get a higher academic scholarship, he needed to bring up his ACT by four points.

Four points is big. St. Jude is bigger.

Teen Son felt confident he would get the score up, if he could just finish the test. Fortunately for dyslexics ACT allows them time and a half to finish the test. However, ACT is very strict about who gets such an accommodation (and rightfully so). Accordingly, Teen Son spent a day in the office of a neuropsychologist for evaluation. It cost a boatload of money, but we knew it would be worth it if it meant getting the extra scholarship.

The doctor came back with a 15-page report. In a nutshell, Teen Son is in fact severely dyslexic (in the one percentile of the population). The bad news, believe it or not, is that he has a superior intelligence. The doctor explained that according to the American Disability Act, accommodations are for those with average or below average intelligence. This made no sense to me: The ACT is an intelligence test. How could his intelligence be properly assessed if he can't finish the test because it takes him longer to read?

This is where St. Jude comes in.

We decided to send the report into ACT anyway. The doctor helped when he summarized his report, noting it would be a great disservice, not only to Teen Son, but to society to deny him this accommodation. After all, we should encourage young adults like him to perform to their fullest potential.

Teen Son and I did our part by praying. Prayers of desperation to St. Jude. We started with a novena and kept praying everyday after the nine days were up.

Weeks passed and we didn't hear from ACT. No denial, but no acceptance either. It wasn't until Teen Son reported to the local high school to retake the test did he learn ACT's decision. He got the extra time!

But that's not the end of the story. He finished the test and then we waited some more. And prayed some more. Now we needed four points.

The letter came yesterday. His score didn't go up four points. It went up five points! And he got a perfect score on science as well as one point shy of perfect in reading! How cool is that! St. Jude totally rocks and so does my kid!

Now, we've got to start doing some research to see who wants to give scholarships to nursing students (he changed his major again) with a perfect ACT score in science. I hope it's not too late. Oh gosh, what am I saying -- I've got a friend in St. Jude to help!

Home Based Speech Therapy

A question came up this weekend after my God's Wildflowers talk about parents administering speech therapy in homeschool setting. I knew I had seen something about this on the Internet but couldn't remember where. Well, now that I'm home, I've found an old email that addressed the issue. I hope the person who asked the question reads my blog:

I have four children that have had speech delays and around 4 years old I used a home based speech therapy program called Straight Talk: A Parent's Guide for Correcting Childhood Mispronounciations, which is the first book and Straight Talk: A Parent's Guide to Language Development, the second book, from Marisa Lapish and Tom and Sherry Bushnell, published by the National Challenged Homeschoolers Associated Network. Here is the website that I bought it from: http://www.nathhan.com/straight.htm. It really worked for us and was easy for me to use.

Does Homeschooling Really Work

When I first began homeschooling, there were a lot of concerned friends and family. How could I teach my own child?

I set out to prove them all wrong. I'd have the children reading by 4 and reciting Shakespeare by 6.

It didn't work out that way. My oldest child was severely dyslexic. New concerns arose. How could I ever teach a special needs child without the appropriate special education degree?

He was also a reserved child. What about socialization? Surely he needed to surrounded by 25 to 30 of his age-appropriate peers to come out of his shell.

He hated to write. Despised it. How would he ever make it in college?

He had to be reminded constantly to get his work done. He wasn't exactly a self-directed learner. Who was I to think that I could motivate him without the appropriate teacher's certificate?

Well, at 10 he took off reading. At 13, he decided he loved to write after all. High school came and he suddenly took an interest in school work. Self-directed learner is now an understatement. Though he's always been a quiet, reserved person, he has many loyal friends.

And, now at 18, he'll be going off to Franciscan University in Steubenville in the fall, where he is 1 of 40 students accepted in the Honor's Program. He even managed a small academic scholarship.
Ummm, maybe homeschooling works after all.

Homeschooling Asperger Kids

Someone left a message in the combox last week about my experience homeschooling a child with Asperger syndrome. If you're not familiar with Asperger, it is a high functioning form of autism.

The last time I visited St. Louis, my sister Eileen really insisted I need to write on this topic. She brought it up several times to drive home her point. You see, she's seen such great progress in my son Sparky that she believes my experience will help others. And, quite honestly, that has been the center of my writing - to share my personal experience in an effort to help others in similar situations.

However, Sparky is only nine and we still have so long to go in this journey. This is why I haven't written on the topic before. But Eileen made some very good points to me that I didn't recognize myself. I see and live with Sparky everyday. The changes I see are so gradual and I also see there is so far to go yet. The changes Eileen sees are three to six months apart and are drastic. She is totally blown away by Sparky's progress.

And then I get the message in the combox. So, for now, until I can write more in-depth, I will share the part of my God's Wildflowers speech about Sparky and Asperger Syndrome:

My husband and I first noticed something when he was about 20 months old. We brought it up to a couple of doctors we were seeing for other issues, but they blew it off. After all, he had already had a lot of intrusive medical procedures performed at his young age. This would surely create some backsliding in his development and in his behavior. He seemed autistic to me, though mildly so, but I trusted the doctors’ assessment. Plus, his seemingly autistic behavior came and went. I was told that an autistic child would always display autistic behavior – it didn’t come and go.

Then God sent a messenger, so to speak. I was putting together The Catholic Homeschool Companion, which is a compilation of essays written by a variety of homeschoolers. One of the authors wrote about her son with Asperger Syndrome. I still didn’t get it after reading her essay, because you know the doctors told me that my son didn’t have autism. However, in the process of editing this essay, I went to the library and borrowed a book the author recommended, Asperger Syndrome and Difficult Moments. I didn’t want a book recommendation in The Companion that I hadn’t read myself. Well, I sat down to read Asperger Syndrome and Difficult Moments on the couch next to my husband, and I was only a few pages into it when I began to cry. I turned to my husband and said, “This book is about Sparky!” I couldn’t believe it.

I went to our family doctor and he confirmed my suspicion that my son has Asperger syndrome. I began to read everything that I could find on the subject and talking to other parents of Asperger kids. This was really helpful. But the most helpful thing was a seminar I attended for school personnel and parents on autism and Asperger. My husband works at a charter school and made arrangements for me attend. The teachers brought videos of their Asperger students to share. These kids seemed so lonely it broke my heart. They sat alone in the farthest corner or in the doorway or at a table by themselves.

The teachers and counselors I met were wonderfully loving people. They really cared about these kids, but there was little the teachers and counselors could do for them. Several teachers told me my son was lucky to be homeschooled because no matter how much help these kids get from their teachers, there is little that can be done about the torment they receive at the hands of their peers. Kids can be terribly cruel and in an environment where there are 25 kids to every adult, a kid who is perceived as weird isn’t going to get a break.

In my home, my son is loved unconditionally. I admit that there are days when he brings us to our knees. But then, maybe being brought to prayer isn’t an entirely bad thing. He requires a lot of attention, but as parents we do what we have to do.

Probably the best advice I’ve gotten so far is the importance of humor. This child is prone to meltdowns. If things don’t go his way he can’t deal with it. He is a creature of habit. When a day doesn’t go as planned, or when something doesn’t happened that was promised, he will completely lose it. Once he is into a meltdown, all you can do is wait it out. The key is to stop it before it gets out of hand.

I’ve learned over the years how to recognize a meltdown is coming. To head it off, I take a deep breath and say something funny. For example, I’ll say to him, “Sparky, no laughing! We don’t allow no stinkin laughing in this house.” And pretty soon his scowl will begin to soften. Then I’ll go on, “If you even think of smiling, you’ll be in huge trouble. I mean HUGE trouble Buddy.” By now he’s laughing out loud and I’m still going on, “You better stop that laughing or I’ll give you something to laugh about Mister.” Then I grab him up and give him a big hug. By now, he’s forgotten that just seconds ago his whole entire life was in a shamble because we couldn’t go to the baseball game on account of rain.

Also, I can’t discipline this child like the other children. Just raising my voice will upset him and any words spoken in the process will be completely lost. I need to keep calm and get him focused. I need to make sure discipline is swift so he makes the connection between his transgression and the punishment. Usually a time-out, putting a toy in time-out, or a chore. If the transgression is against a sibling, I usually have to give him some instruction on showing compassion. He doesn’t seem to understand that his actions can hurt other human beings. We’re still working on this and probably will be for a while yet.

As for homeschooling, he is very bright and is light years ahead. However, reading is another story. It's different from his dyslexic siblings, it is more like he just wasn’t ready. Then suddenly, just last summer he started to show readiness. I used Orton-Gillingham with him this year, along with his younger sister, and he took off quickly. He's now a pretty fluent reader.

Homeschooling and Dyslexia

In response to my recent Catholic Exchange column on dyslexia, I received the following email. The sender gave her permission to reprint here:

Dear Maureen,

I have a nine year old daughter who is the fifth of my six children whom are all homeschooled. She is dyslexic, with a written expression disorder and has dysgraphia. We have based most of our curriculum on Seton Home study materials. I was told my daughter will not learn well from a workbook. She did learn to read last year with the Lindemood Bell program It is an excellent program but way to expensive for us to continue. I need to find material that I can give to her to work with on her own at her own pace. She is an eager learner but gets frustrated with me when I try to instruct her. I want to homeschool but don't know how to!? Any suggestions you can offer to me is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Very frustrated but a willing heart,

Here is my response to the writer. (Note: I'm not a special needs expert, just a mom sharing personal experience.)

I'm not sure that a dyslexic child could work on her own. My son didn't take off reading until he was ten, after two years of intensive one-on-one, multi-sensory, reading lessons with me. We only spent 20 or so minutes a day as that is as long as I could keep his attention. But we did it every day consistently (including through the summer).

I'm not sure either how you could do it inexpensively. I'm the queen of thrift and I'm also the queen of 'here's a book kids, go learn!' But, with a learning disability that's a difficult approach at best.

I'm not familiar with Seton's structure, but I do understand that they do have good learning disability counseling. And I hear the Lindendwood Bell program is good.

I took a class from someone trained by the Orton Gillingham Society. It cost about $200 for the class and materials. More money than I had to spare, but you do what you have to do.

They are right in saying that dyslexic kids can't learn from workbooks, however, you can supplement with workbooks. I found the MCP phonics workbooks to be horribly useless with my dyslexic children (I also have a daughter who struggled). What I recommend is the Explode the Code workbooks for supplemental material.

It's also good to have lots of very simple readers for practice. You want to keep them simple as you don't want to discourage her. Bob Books are great and you may find them at the library. Also good are the Little Stories for Little Folks from Catholic Heritage Curricula and Little Angel Readers from Stone Tablet Press. We even made our own homemade readers. Plus, the library will have other readers.

If you really can't afford these materials, your last option is looking into services provided by your local public school.

The most important thing to do is to read aloud to your child!!! Since you have older children, get them involved. They can read aloud, give instruction, listen to her read, etc.

I hope this is helpful.

If you have any additional advice for the letter writer, please leave a comment. It's always good to hear from more than one source.

CE: A Journey into the World of Dyslexia

This week's homeschool column is up at Catholic Exchange.

Many years ago, when my oldest son began school, I assumed that he would be reading in no time. I could not have been more wrong.